As you have hopefully heard I’m working on a book for McGraw Hill on emergent collaboration. After a few months of writing I can definitely say I have undertaken a daunting, humbling, yet very fun and interesting task. You see, the book that I’m writing isn’t a book on why emergent collaboration is important or why your organization should invest in it. No, this book is a strategic planning and blueprint guide for actually making these technologies and strategies work within your organization. This to me is the hardest topic to write about and there are very few resources on this topic, which is exactly why I decided to tackle it. Over the past few weeks I have read dozens of collaboration books, spoken with many companies implementing these concepts, consulted with clients, and have done absolutely everything I could to make sure that this book is going to be a valuable and long-lasting resource. The book is going to feature a lot of new content dealing with things such as actually implementing strategies, building teams, selecting vendors, developing and mapping uses cases, understanding measures of success, and basically everything else that an organization needs to know about making emergent collaboration work within the enterprise. One of the challenges I have had in writing this book is making sure I can provide multiple perspectives and options to readers, in other words, this book isn’t a “do it this way or fail” book, it’s a “here is a framework for how you can do it which you can adapt” (which I think is far more valuable).

Thus far I have written just around 36,000 words and my manuscript which is due November 1st needs to have at least 65,000 words (and then the fun part of editing begins). I have also secured a lot of great contributors for various chapters of the book who I will announce in the coming weeks (if you are involved with emergent collaboration at your organization and want to be included then email me). I think the book will have a lot of depth as it will feature not only my own experiences and ideas but also those of practitioners at companies from around the world. In addition the book will also feature hard data from our “state of enterprise 2.0″ survey report which we are going to be releasing in a few weeks.

I’m really excited for this book to get published (around summer of 2012) because this has definitely been one of the hardest things I have done so far. But, writing this book has pushed me and forced me (and Connie, my partner in crime at Chess) to think about things and questions which then led me to come up with answers and solutions. It has definitely been an exercise in critical thinking. I don’t have a formal working title for the book yet because as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m trying to figure out what it is that I want to call “this,” whether it is enterprise 2.0, social business, emergent collaboration, or anything else; has yet to be determined.

I have some pretty interesting ideas for marketing which I will share in the future, as well as some creative ideas for how I can add additional value to readers of the book. Pre-sales for the book will be live in a few months or so and bulk purchases for conferences and organizations will also definitely be available.

Principal of Chess Media Group, a social business consultancy. Jacob works with mid and enterprise organizations on developing customer and employee engagement strategies. He is also the co-author of Twittfaced, a social media 101 book for business. Jacob authors a Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0 blog.